spiritual fitness

we just want to be loved.

       we all do.                                 

it's been this way for lifetimes really... wanting, needing, yearning... romantic love gets close... but even in the heat, and excitement, and flurry of being the single most important thing in someone's world... underneath all that yummy comfort... if we are really honest with ourselves.. is this aching yearning for something more... and that something more confuses us.. how can we wonder beyond being loved in a way that seems perfect? How can we be that screwed up?

Thing is, we are not screwed up when we touch this emptiness that lies underneath our perfect love.. we are finally touching our perfection when we get honest with ourself that there is something more than what lay outside of ourself....

Most people don't dig deep enough to even get there.. as soon as it is touched we jump away from the feeling as if it were a hot stove and our finger might get burned. We are so afraid to feel what lay beneath the layers of the feeling that goes beyond how the world thinks and feels about us. 

When we do, suddenly the chest becomes tight, the solar plexus locks down, our tummy twists in anguish... satisfying love, is something no one teaches us how to attain. That is why Valentine's Day is so cherished, it is the day we assess our value in the world.. our value  with another, society says so..Hallmark says so... we get red roses and chocolate, dinner's for two... union. Isn't that what we want, yes, union. And so when we do, why is it fleeting? Why do we need a day to say I LOVE YOU?

I think it is because we forget how to know I love you on the inside first, so we look for it on the outside. And the world tells us, the outside is very very important. For you will be measured in value and assessed in this world by how you present. Look at the magazines, size up the latest look and integrate, assimilate, copy and paste it upon yourself.. and the world will welcome and embrace you. 

Get busy enough and you will not notice you don't fit in with your heart and soul for the outward reflection makes sense to the world around you so you fit in and that is all that matters right?

I notice when I teach traditional group exercise classes. If I stick to the regular verbal protocol of "burning fat", "toning muscle", "shaping the body" type of encouragement... my classes "get me" and they get into their workout.. after all that is what exercise is for, right, melt what is unwanted, build more of what you don't have enough of, come exercise yourself into a better looking body. Is this bad? Certainly not. But, in class... I find that personally, I do not care about teaching about empowering the body so much in this way. So yes, there is a little of this concept of bettering the body parts to a degree.. but more often I like excavating what lay beneath our superficial layers of mind and heart. I find that intense cardio like indoor cycling gets one to the core of their emotions quickly. 

I find when teaching classes that create almost immediate exhaustion, people can't hold their "image" up and go that deep physically at the same time. As people in class would physically melt in sweat, their faces began to tell me a story about their deep seeded emotions. An empathetic energy rises in the room and as the work out gets more intense, emotions run higher, angers rise to the surface, loss, uncertainty, worth issues, pain body, self worth vulnerability... I can see veils drop that are otherwise in tact unless people are brought to the brink of being able to hold it together which indeed indoor cycling can crumble even the most impenetrable of image holders. 

As I taught these classes, I realized, this is a great time to rummage through the layers and get to the deep knowing underneath the layers of our worth and perception of our value in the world. No Hallmark holiday can reach into these stores. If we want to feel our value, we have to dig deep... underneath our image oriented self, is the self that needs no outside validation, it simply is. 

So in these seemingly conventional "spin" classes (indoor cycling)... I began to speak to the inner person... a language of empowerment, pushing beyond the obvious where we all meet and allowing the body to allow the inhibitions to fall away, when the frustrations arise from meeting such an intense part of ourself floats up from the push of going deeper into the ride, to allow it to come up. And what I found was that there is a lot of pain body inside us that exercise can get us to when we allow it bubble up. And under this pain body is bliss. And it feels euphoric to reach. Endorphins surge and float through the channels and eddies of your body. Suddenly we touch on a love that is not outside of us at all, but deeply inside of us... needing to be tapped like water running underground. This is only one way to reach the bliss of what lay beneath the obvious layers of your mind and heart... it is one simple way to reach your soul love. But when you reach this soul love, you deeply connect with the essence that this love you wanted on Valentine's Day is not going to come from someone outside of you until you can touch it inside of you.. And the deepest love, is not sitting just in the stores of your heart, although the heart is a catalyst for how the soul love enters into your physical, emotional, psychological and psychic body... your ephemeral body of your Soul is always connected to your Essence... your heart is the gateway way. There are many layers inside the heart center of who you are... and breaking through the layers of self protection is something that takes time. Why I love intense physical exercise as a means, is because it is so incredibly innocent in its approach. You just have to use your body to begin, and push it hard enough to push past your mental control. What I mean by that is the mind has a lot of dialogue in the beginning of exercise until you let go and the body keeps going but the mind can catch up anymore-- so it starts to fall behind, and slowly begins to give up because it can't keep up its chatter while the body is pushing so hard.. that finally the body leaves the mind in the dust.. when this happens, there is a sudden quiet for a little while, and this is the time when the heart gateway opens. At the gate, there can be a lot of suppressed emotions. Anger is a biggie. As  I teach, I can see that anger is one of the first emotions to pop up on the faces of my students, fear of failure is another popular vibration that comes into play. 

As I see and feel these emotions floating to the surface, I begin a new class dialogue. My indoor cycling instruction changes to a dialogue about fueling breath. Feeling the energy of empowerment to rise up in the body-through feeling the powerful confident, loving perfect self within. Encouraging each of us that this is our birthright, to feel and know this deep love within us, but we must have courage to let the lesser vibrations express themselves so the higher vibrations can fully flow free. Harnessing the trapped emotions and breathing through them instead of letting them defeat the workout, using the workout to allow them to rise up, but also provide an energetic exit so they can leave the body in a healthy and good way instead of getting trapped again underneath in that mysterious hard to reach place they get stored. 

As these feelings rise, and have a safe way to process and exit. I see a "glow" shift in my students. I can feel that love I know we all crave, rise up in their body in self confidence. I smile inside that this is a way to reach the soul love inside us. And although it is base and fundamental.. it provides a tool or a way into that realm where the love that we are remains not contingent on whether someone "Sees" us but that we "Feel" us, and when that happens.. the love that comes from us on the outside does not feel so vulnerable because we do not risk being destroyed by it when it changes form, or we are not loved as we wish.. We allow the outside world to change and grow because we have found ways to stay connected to the bliss that lay beyond where we get stuck in the fear, anger, hurt body that lay directly above the bliss body. We can pass through that fear body through our intensity in a safe way, and not be emotionally destroyed by it. Our image on the outside becomes a reflection of that deep inner radiance instead of something contrived off the popular trend of society's idea of style and standard.... to Something that is much more filled with grace.

A beautiful way to feel the love we all wish for is a work to experience what moving through the layers means, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Dive deep into the willingness to swim into the waters of you, and the layers that have made you who are are for all time as you know it... 

Namaste, my dearest sisters and brothers...